Salt and Sand
by Aenigmatic
Summary: He remembers the salt and the sand when he found Geraint. History repeats itself when Molly Dawes upends his world.
1. Chapter 1

**Salt and sand**

 _A/N: Ever so often I crawl out of my fiction-induced stupor to write something that seems to affect me more deeply that I thought. BBC's Our Girl is one of those. I binged watched Series 1 and found myself riveted. Then I went onto Series 2 and hated the damned soap-opera-ish feel of a love-triangle that shouldn't have even been allowed to exist. The only thing that stayed unchanged was how I couldn't get good ol' Captain James and his incredibly devoted pint-sized medic out of my head._

 _I hadn't a well-formed idea of how this was going to go down, only that I wanted to dig deeper into James's lack of emotional involvement and how Molly changes it all throughout the series. It turned out to be a collection of random scenes that took a different turn somehow and ended where I least expected._

 _Not sorry. (and that's the beauty of fanfic)_

 _All mistakes are my own._

oOo

When Captain Charles James looks at the world face down on his stomach, Geraint Smith is a mere, unmoving speck of dark brown and red in the arid landscape.

Insignificant in the larger scheme of things, in the war-torn place that's ruddy Afghan.

There is no awareness of how much time has gone by, save for the number of rocks he'd gone past.

The distance is short but interminable. Easy to cover with his usual long strides, unimaginably impossible to cross in a hostile area without the threat of snipers or buried mines.

Nothing but time and distance separate him from Smith.

The last ten metres are the hardest to traverse. The panicked, desperate shouts of Two Section have long been swallowed by the eerie silence that seems to exist in only in this purgatory that hasn't deigned to release him from its grasp.

His pants are harsh and loud in his ears, the metallic tang of blood from the shredded flesh of his shins and calves as he hauls them over jagged rock too nauseating to ignore. Then there's the raw scuff of his boots along the sandy surface as he drags the length of his legs along each excruciating metre.

Agony does not even begin to describe the fire that sluices down his spine with every hitch of his knee propelling him forward. The trail of blood he leaves—dull stains of red dotting the brown, tawny land—is a shining beacon for any tracker.

Fear is now that unerring drillmaster whispering horrid intentions into his head, that terrible keening edge that keeps him going on.

And it has never failed.

' _Stay focus, stay alert and stay alive_ ' might be the mantra that he drums unendingly into the lads, but he is unashamed to admit even that even he can't keep that lofty piece of advice right now. From time to time, he tells them to be brilliant because they need to be. It's a necessary skill and mind-set each and every one of those tossers will learn soon enough if they want to stay alive.

Before he even reaches Geraint, he knows that the poor sod is dead, as limp as a ragdoll trampled and done in by the unrelenting heat.

The massive bleed-out from the soldier's bullet-riddled neck is the obvious clue.

The important details—Smith's torn flesh, the awkward sprawl of death—suddenly come into focus as he exhales hard. It's akin to jolting upright in bed from a semi-conscious state after that stretch of time when he commando-crawled himself into a narrow, condensed world where only the thought of never leaving a man behind existed.

His assault rifle hangs awkwardly in the crook of his arm. His rucksack's half-emptied of the things he'll need to save anyone. His ribs just fucking hurt.

And sand is just…fucking everywhere. Grit in his eyes, dirt in between his toes. In the crease between his eyelids, lodged behind his ears.

Stifling the insane urge to laugh at how little Sandhurst has prepared him for this, James knows that that these two-hundred metres isn't really about getting a fallen soldier to his medic but getting a body back to a weeping mother who can at least receive a folded flag for her son's short-lived service to Her Majesty.

How bloody, fucking unfair, innit?

The bonds between men are made stronger because of death rather than life. Two Section will, as he instinctively knows, after they mourn, be a better, well-oiled cog turning in the massive military machine because someone has paid for this in blood.

As soon as this philosophical whine surfaces, James shuts it down, knowing that it'll simply edge him into a place where messy emotions start to take over—a place where he has absolutely no intention of venturing into.

"Geraint, mate?" James finds himself croaking out, laying a shaking hand on the fallen soldier's shoulder as though he were still a living, breathing soul. "I'm bringing you back. You'll see your mother again."

Then he tells the lads that the body has been retrieved, amazed that the salt he suddenly tastes on his face isn't just sweat but falling tears making silent tracks through the thick layer of grit on his face.

James hunches under the weight of the body, unable to stop the shudders from wracking his shoulders as the enormity of what has just transpired starts to sink in. Suddenly, he needs something tangible to hold onto—an inarticulate promise of some sort or perhaps a larger sign that fate hasn't had it all written out for him and the lads yet—that he can't find under the desolate desert sky or in the disbelieving silence that greets him when he finally returns to security of Bastion.

The answer doesn't come until much later as he stands over the flag-draped casket.

oOo

A rare smile creases Dr. Hattenstone's stern visage.

"Captain James, you appear to have competently managed your recovery. You have reassured me of the steps you have actively sought in various psychological assessments and the physical fitness reports from Headley Court put you in good stead to be restored to active service."

The approval means everything.

He stands and shakes the doctor's proffered hand, staring at the medical report marked 'Confidential'.

 _Cleared for immediate deployment._

oOo

Jealous, childish anger, if it were given a label, sounds like a juvenile sulk that is unbecoming of an officer in the British Army.

Yet in front of the Mastiff, the vallon sweeping back and forth, James finally manages to cast off the disillusionment that hadn't let go of its vise-like grip since the inadvertent revelation of Dawes's and Smurf's chummy trip in Newport.

It isn't Dawes's fault. None of it is. On paper, his men's personal lives are their own to fuck up, the storm-in-a-teacup drama none of his bloody business whatsoever. His only business, as Captain, is to _not_ get involved.

Not emotionally, not even socially. The retreat of his tent—apart from the stag and medic tents—provides that safe distance. Physical separation, should he wish it, especially if the deliberate enforcement of separation by rank isn't working too well.

But like a besotted idiot with a crush that'd sneaked up on him, he finds himself entangled in a game of emotions that shouldn't be allowed to surface during this six months at all.

In fact, he thought he'd learned the price of getting emotionally involved by the time Molly Dawes joined the ranks of Two Section as the replacement medic. His fourth tour had already proven to be both his salvation and his nightmare. It has been his only blessed way to skip out on the mess of divorce proceedings turned nasty and needlessly complicated, exacerbated only by a feisty cockney voice that rises high above the cheeky lads' cruel taunts. Without the slightest hesitation, he'd snapped at the cockwombles to sort themselves out then threatened to lob Dawes out of the plane, grimly convinced that it wouldn't take much to make her break.

His scoffing prediction had _almost_ come true.

Dawes had paved her own road to perdition as she fumbled her way through the first few weeks, her ineptness _almost_ painful to watch.

But not quite.

Somehow she had always managed to dig in, though not without an exasperating determination to take his advice of winning hearts and minds a little too seriously, then turned a sharp corner by stupidly crawling into a minefield to save a critically-injured Smurf. He'd shouted himself hoarse, helpless to do anything but hope that the cover he and the rest of the section provided would have been enough.

After a series of events at the FOB and Dawes's time spent in Newport, he'd found himself slipping down the slope that led down a place he'd rather not examine, yet unable to stop that slide into fondness and affection for a medic whom he now struggles to keep at some distance.

Perhaps that should have been sufficient warning.

His insistence on keeping any sharp emotion out of things here is slowly being overwritten by a growing mental conflict that alternates between the memories of Smurf's femoral bleed out and Dawes's unswerving dedication to a platoon (and its commanding officer) who frankly hadn't quite deserved it in the first few weeks of her arrival.

As terrifying as the loss of control, of the ironclad grip on detachment is proving to be, it's the constant reminder of loss and the bloody memories that he wants to keep at bay. Geraint Smith's slack face is starting to make consistent appearances in his night terrors. It's enough to disintegrate the monochromatic canvas that he's carefully woven on this tour to the point where he can't see straight when Dawes and Smurf are mentioned. Yet every resolution that he makes each hour to keep Dawes on her feet and away from him is fruitless when all she does is—

"Nothing happened with Smurf. But at least now I know."

Dawes wants a quiet moment that he isn't prepared for. It's the wrong place, the wrong time, despite a part of him craving that same conversation.

James keeps his sights on the unmoving form below the sheet. "Know what?"

"Well I never thought that you would look at someone like me. I thought that you were out of my league."

His feet stop of their own accord. "What are you trying to say, Dawes?"

"I'm just saying...I'm fond of you, Sir. And I wanted to tell you in case we get to that sheet, and someone detonates it and we're blown to smithereens."

Her soft confession has his world spinning off its axis, then exploding in a prism of colour so at odds with the dry brown of the dirt track. His heart rate spikes sharply upward as he debates between scoffing at the audacity of that statement and being impressed with unbelievable courage it must have taken her to say that.

The momentary loss of words thankfully doesn't last long, not when he's painfully aware of the rest of the section fanned out and tensely trigger-happy.

"Let's continue this conversation when we're back at Brize Norton, shall we?"

"Do you love me?" Her voice is shaky with uncertainty.

Shocked into silence, he whips around only to see her ashen face, vallon frozen at the edge of the sheet.

There's suddenly a fuckload of things he wants to say to her. Blame he wants to assign her for the confusion that he can't seem to make sense of each time she's near, the inexplicable anger when he'd learnt about her in Newport, or her sheer impertinence of even bringing up a conversation that shouldn't even exist between a Commanding Officer and his subordinate, or the number of regulations they would be breaching if he didn't put a damn stop to this right fucking now.

He has no clear answer here, only righteous, military-sanctioned justification for what he's about to throw at her before a bloodied hand reaches for the vallon.

The harshest form of a shutdown.

"You will speak no more of this matter, Dawes."

oOo

"What you doing up there, Dawes?"

He stops and smirks as he watches her stifle a surprised shriek, propping his foot up on the middle rung of the ladder and the other resting casually on the one above.

"Sir!"

"0030. Should be hitting the pit by now." He makes a show of checking his watch. "Unless PT isn't tiring enough. Or maybe this is a sign that I'll need to change it—"

"You're shittin' me, boss," she mumbles with a look of disbelief on her face.

The day is too raw for jokes.

Yet James finds himself trying to lighten it all for them both after the way it'd rained hell and brimstone, from the stunning confession of this pint-sized woman and the utter, utter boldness when she'd asked if he loved her, to his wordless answer when he'd placed his forehead against hers and wiped those tears away when Sohail crashed after his extraordinary but terrifying revelation.

"It's beautiful up here," she confesses as she looks at the stars. "I like it as much as you like your paddling pool."

He wants to laugh at the absurd comparison. And after the day they've both had, laughter is an unthinkable commodity until Dawes shows up with it.

But with Dawes, it's easy to surrender to it. To her.

After brief hesitation, he glances around, then climbs to the top of the wooden structure to join her, taking comfort in the quiet camp and the darkness that blankets them with an intimacy he hadn't known he craved until she'd called into question everything—especially the army regulations—that he'd held high and above reproach.

In all his tours here, he'd never taken the time to look at the night sky, too happily foregoing the sight of the heavens spread before him for the constant work and strategic meetings that stretch way into the wee hours of the morning.

The light-hearted atmosphere settles into something heavier, more awkward. But Dawes still doesn't speak minutes after he hauls himself up next to her.

They break the silence simultaneously.

"Boss, I should hit the—"

"Dawes, I—"

She sighs, then nimbly swings herself over the ladder, avoiding his eyes as she does so. "I should go, Boss. Long day, as you said."

It's the near-imperceptible sad defeat underlying the quiet goodnight that he hears; that much attuned he has become to Dawes's odd inflections and incomprehensible English. Only then does James realise this is as difficult for Dawes as it is for him where he'd once assumed her flagrant disobedience of his orders was simply an extension of her general disregard for army regulations.

She is fighting this attraction as much as he had been, already honouring his terse command earlier in the day. Even as she's making him second-guess his words, his own command and his ability to see this tour through, James wishes for a repeat of the day, those few precious minutes where he could have spoken differently.

Because all it'd taken was a span of a few hours for his entire perception of the rules of engagement to change, thanks to a dying man who inadvertently revealed the target Dawes had become.

"Dawes, stop."

But she doesn't.

He repeats himself softly for fear of waking the camp with this drama of their own making, dismayed that she trudges forward without turning back.

James leaps several rungs of the ladder to catch up with her before hustling her through the flap of his tent, urgently needing to mend the damage that he'd inflicted under the guise of upholding the regulations earlier in the day.

"We're not done," he tells her quietly as he takes a step closer to where she stands, wanting to memorise the imprint of her in his tent, all Westham blue and purple against drab olive and camouflage.

"Nothing's changed, boss."

He thinks he still hears the sliver of hope in her ragged, uncertain whisper as he cynically laughs at the irony of their conversation. In this reversal of roles, he's now confronting her as she'd done earlier, resurrecting a topic that should have been dead and buried on his own orders.

"Everything has." His answer is sure this time, despite the U-turn he'd just done.

Sohail's revelation had frightened the life out of him as much as it had Dawes and the psychological impact of shared trauma aside, it'd merely hammered home the point that he ought to give up this particular fight on a different front.

Dawes snorts elegantly, briefly breaking the spell. "If you mean I'm now the Taliban's target, then that's—"

He interrupts her unapologetically, crowding her space. "Do you love me?"

A brief glance downward and he sees her hands—her clenched fists—shaking. It's instinct to take her smaller ones in his and place a kiss on her knuckles before he allows himself the luxury of lightly moving his hands upwards until they curl around her shoulders.

"Boss—"

"Not here, not now," he whispers, willing her to hold his unflinching stare. "Answer me."

Her hesitation lasts several long seconds until she turns her green eyes to tell him honestly, "All I wanted was for you to be the last thing I see."

Her deflection is a breathtaking admission on its own and the last thing he remembers as distance and daylight between them disappear.

He tells her "Ditto" and then they're plastered against each other, giving into blind fumbles and rushed kisses that push him beyond the capacity for thought and reason, roughly circling the tent until they reach the bed at the far end of it. Dawes's knees hit the edge of the thin mattress and he willingly follows her down, using his weight to pin her where he needs her to be as they work out their own conflicted thoughts with physical, graceless movements.

He hooks his fingers down the waistband of her shorts, then shucks them carelessly on the sandy ground, uncaring that she's mirroring his actions with his own pants. The frenzied assault he launches on her clothes and then on her skin is a surprise, at least at the back of his mind. That Dawes is returning the favour with every bit of enthusiasm helps validates it somehow.

The war in Afghan, the mission, the tour, his role as Bossman—he forgets it all for once. Surrenders instead, to an enormous need that would sound daft if he gave words to it. Their feverish coupling, born in the murky pool of forbidden desire, comes to fruition where rank is relegated to a personnel report forgotten at the bottom of his drawer. The press of her short nails into his back, his first press into her are surreal moments that take up all the space in his head and replace clarity with chaos.

His focus is only Molly Dawes, the young woman who wants him as much as he wants her, who begs for more with her legs clamped around his thighs as he changes his rhythm to elicit the reaction he wants. Onward and higher, heading far beyond what he could have ever conceived when they'd first lined up at Brize for the start of the tour.

They crash spectacularly against the rocks into a blissful oblivion that he only emerges from when he feels her uneven breaths whispering along the grinding pulse in his neck.

He pulls her closer, his lips brushing her forehead.

On his fingertips, he feels the coarse grains of Afghan sand that lingers in her hair and tastes the salt of her tears on her cheeks with his tongue.

It's the salt and sand that he remembers. That inescapable nightmare that now makes him happy.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Part 2 was never supposed to happen. But I had such lofty ideas, then Molly and James however, added their own twist. In fact, I think this should be better renamed 'The ways M/J fall into bed, these randy buggers'._

 _Learning that they got married made me so happy._

 _You've overwhelmed me with your support and reviews and I can't say thank you enough. So well, I think Molly insisted on having her own tale told, so here goes. There'll be a short addendum to this chapter added in the next day or so and I'll explain why with it._

 _A side but not quite relevant point: am I the only one who thinks that James looks different in Series 2? Less…chiselled? Um…face-fatter? Hair's shorter? Scruffier? Don't get me wrong here, he's still extremely handsome. Can't put my finger on what but I actually thought I was looking at a different actor when I saw James deliver the bad news to Georgie._

oOo

It's the distant squawk of a nocturnal creature that rouses her from an unintended doze on a broad chest. Panic sets in not too long after as she feels an unfamiliar weight of an arm across her torso, until her head clears sufficiently to kick into remembrance what had just transpired between her and the Captain.

James lifts his arms and she feels the loss keenly as he gently settles her upright and gathers her clothes.

"Quiet, Dawes." His whisper is urgent, yet it reignites a sensual memory that she is now certain will go to her grave with her. He traces an absent finger over her cheek as they both turn to look at the digital clock that casts the far end of his tent in a faint green hue."0200. World enough and time for you to go. Three hours before PT."

"And I thought the day started perfect," she retorts in kind even as she catches the glint in his eyes, eliciting a stifled smirk from him.

She makes a quick move towards the entrance of his tent, but not before she feels the heat of his body behind her and the joyful burden of having his hands lying heavy on her shoulders as he delivers his parting shot.

"Sleep tight, Molly."

Even that has the power to heat her cheeks and make her knees tremble.

Slipping out into the night, she sees Fingers on sentry-duty and the constant shifting of the border guards but she knows their well-trodden paths around the FOB well enough to make some strategic turns before she surreptitiously tiptoes into the medic tent.

A sigh of relief escapes her. It's a thrill that wears off as suddenly as the euphoria of being with Captain James when they both well know they've just entered dangerous ground.

Play it right and no one's the wiser at Brize at their return. Tip that delicate balance and they'd be ruined, his sterling career and her fledgling one absolutely gutted. It's a new dawn, a new day and a whole new game that she ironically gains a fuller understanding of—and of James's constant harping on staying focused on the mission—after last night. Of why he refuses to put a label on them but merely vaguely references the future after this tour using small pieces of real estate in England that she automatically calls a bit shit if only to make him laugh wryly at her verbal challenge.

What now, then? The better part of six months has gone by in a flash and she knows she isn't that same poor, wide-eyed sod who'd stepped into the Hercules wondering what new and scary thing awaited her.

These few months in Afghan have become the best and worst schoolmaster she's never had. In this regimented lifestyle, Molly constantly finds new definitions of conflict and peace and they're hidden in treasure troves in the oddest corners: in a young Afghan girl's tears and joy, in her mother's messy scrawled letter saying things will be shit until she returns and most recently, in a Captain who, to her utmost disbelief, reciprocates the admiration and affection she has for him.

They live worlds apart, in circles that would never have intersected in a million years. But Afghanistan and the Army have worn down the sharp edge of class and social status into blunt, funny objects that have lost their ability to poke deep.

Not for the first time, she wishes he knew without a doubt, how precious he's become to her, how much she, like Two Section would do anything for him, fuelled by a mix of loyalty and the extra bit of her heart that the lads don't have. Yet he'll always be the boss to her somehow, but only because it's a reminder of the twist in luck—or fate—that brought them on this collision course.

She slumps onto her own bedding and dozes off fitfully, her dreams filled with the rasp of day-old stubble and the smooth slide of skin on skin.

oOo

Captain James now joins her on the roof when he can, be it for a minute or several at her usual spot when he isn't tied up in the Ops tent for some meeting or other. The distance between them is always exaggerated—with him sometimes perched on the ladder with a clipboard in hand while she remains on the roof with her own stationery—so it merely seems as though Two Section's medic is merely keeping the Bossman apprised of the day's events from an unusual vantage position.

In the weeks since she'd learned about the ex-wife and the son he'd been reluctant to mention, they've decided on the unspoken rule to start from the beginning. As though they were friends on a blind date on the side of the Olympic Stadium or serendipitous strangers who bumped into each other accidentally on some ridiculously long staircase in Bath where she fears falling down.

That way, they speed date, through random gap-fills of both important and insignificant events of their lives without adhering to any chronological order. That way, she knows he's starting to let her in on the details that make up Charles James without the scrutiny of the lads in question.

Nothing else remotely resembling that night happens. It isn't as though they'd even really seen each other starkers properly in the dark.

In fact, the man who talks to her under the faint light of the stars bears only a physical resemblance to the detached, aloof Captain who bawls them out for PT each day and barks at them constantly on patrol.

She's only part-resentful, part-in awe of the way he cleaves himself so neatly and so effortlessly into compartments—save for that day he'd torn through her after learning about Newport and Smurf—that doctors would have declared him schizophrenic.

The distinct waft of coffee coalesces into a dark shape crossing the dirt path.

But because it had always been tea for her and her family, and unschooled as she is in the flavours of Nespresso, it's yet another posh-boy quirk she's come to associate with him.

"Oi, what's that stink?"

She calls out in greeting and nods at the steaming cup that he manages to hold in one hand while he goes up the ladder halfway. "You'd be buggered for sleep, Sir. And you'd need it to face the bleedin' wankers tomorrow."

"Keep mocking me, Dawes," he says and takes a demonstrative sip, "and you'll find yourself on latrine clean. I'd offer you a taste of Nespresso's finest, but seeing as you have something up your arse about coffee—"

"Tetley, Sir. Or Tesco's Original."

"What are you, the Queen? Tea's out of fashion, Dawes."

"You posh tosser."

"Snobby tea drinker."

There's no comeback she can mouth him off for that absolutely ridiculous accusation, so she merely shakes her head at his taking the piss out of her when he can.

As though to knock home the point, the cup makes a pass in front of her nose, which she tries playfully to avoid.

"It's _Rosabaya_."

The boss suddenly drops his tone, a well-meaning inflection in that four-syllable word as he fiddles first with the handle on the plastic cup that holds his own form of poison, then touches the side of it gently to her hand.

Just like that, the air shifts.

She forgets the warm currents that circles the FOB as the warmth of the cup jolts her into that same prickling awareness of him that nothing else, not even the adrenaline-filled days of patching injured soldiers, had managed to replicate. The instant reminder of their intertwined fingers on the day he'd caught her out after her shower still sends chills down her spine, that moment where he'd ordered her to return to him now etched indelibly in her memory banks.

The light in the boss's eyes changes too, filling with an intensity and a banked heat that parallel the restlessness plaguing her body.

Wordlessly, Molly moves for the ladder, forcing him down first, then forces herself to look past that chiselled face, the half-formed smile and at the rings around his eyes and the mussed hair.

"You're knackered."

He grins wanly and gestures to the coffee. "Got a banging headache, Dawes. Couldn't be arsed to take anything but this."

"Medic tent, now," She blurts out simply for the insane need to channel this burst of excitement elsewhere, then tries to put in as much authority as she could into the order, only to scowl when his grin turns into a smirk. "There'll be something to sort you out right, I'm sure."

But he follows her anyway; that much lassitude he gives when an audience doesn't exist and it serves as a comforting reminder that James is fully cognizant and capable of treating her as an equal if rank is taken away.

The boss swings himself effortlessly onto the cot and watches her intently while she rummages in a drawer for Aspirins. His active, prolonged perusal, so unlike the hard looks he gives the entire platoon on a daily basis, is making her flush.

"The Army was all I wanted. The regulations my only guidance. And they've never failed."

 _Until now._

Captain James doesn't say that, but Molly hears the vulnerability of the unspoken admission loud and clear. The tinge of regret in it has her straightening in alarm, the capsules abruptly forgotten. But he isn't meeting her eyes, staring instead at the slanted top as though it holds all the answers they badly need.

In all their interactions, he had never been this open with her, not even when he'd finally talked about Rebecca and Sam and the horrific argument that followed thereafter. This hushed confession, inserted in between their moments of levity, sounds like a sinner's prayer and the last, shameful transgression he holds fast to his chest before unburdening them at the altar where dreams come to die.

To start apologising would seem terribly inadequate and dishonest now that he's betrayed this set of hallowed rules that _should_ mean everything to him. Molly tries to do it anyway, but he shakes his head at her tentative effort in keeping the peace.

"Until I met you," he says tentatively. "And I learned that things…can be different."

On her relieved exhale, the clock ticks on again, only to slow once more when he hops off the cot to lean against the table where she'd scattered the first aid supplies to get to the painkillers.

It takes courage to turn and face him after that extraordinary turn of conversation that's left a small amount of moisture gathering at the edge of her eyes. But he's there, as solid as she can ever imagine, looking at her with some kind of muted wonder and disbelief that she can finally see in their close proximity.

"Never took you as a romantic, Boss," she murmurs lightly and places her hands atop his.

He huffs a laugh and stares down at their joined hands, then releases one to trace her knuckles.

"Oh, you ain't seen half of it yet, Private Dawes."

The blasé quip, in the colloquial speak she recognises all too well, does no justice to the look in his eyes.

Molly closes the infinitesimal space between them this time and lifts herself to cup the strong contour of his jaw before touching her lips to his. Time and thought fall away when their lips separate and meet again with a growing urgency fuelled by her urge to burrow past the veneer of absolute control that James wears like a second skin.

The harsh desert winds that swirl around the FOB pick up as he lifts her against him and sits her down on the cot he'd previously occupied, reversing their positions. She tugs insistently at the hem of his shirt first and pulls it over his head, then feels him do the exact thing to hers.

Closing her eyes, she tilts her pelvis upward at his urging, then allows muscle memory to take over and lets desire guide her motions as it does his.

If she half believed in the immutable quality of fate or lady luck as much as he did, it'd be too easy to say the sum of their mistakes—her misspent time before the Army, his broken marriage—has converged on this point in time. Any form of resistance, be it his ironclad will or her foolhardy decisions will prove futile in altering this course laid out for the both of them. But she doesn't quite really buy into that, conscious only of the fact that she's remaking her life and setting it down a path where minefields and rewards lie in wait, the Captain being the only fork in it she hadn't accounted for.

As far as she knows, they're both grounded in the present, drawn together in the unlikeliest of places, stripped bare in places when most of their clothes still stay on as his driving thrusts finally silence the cacophony of white noise in her head.

The moon is high in the clear sky by the time he leaves, the painkillers long forgotten at the table.


	3. Addendum

_A/N: This was the original part of the last chapter, but I hated writing it so much that I almost didn't want to put it in. In fact, I nearly deleted the lot of it in a fit of frustration after the number of times it's been rewritten._

 _For those who addressed my suspicions about CJ…yes! Thank you! At least now I know it isn't just me. I do like the spontaneous, conflicted James in S1 a lot more than the sidelined but sexy-dad (and more boring) James in S2, because he also just so much more fun to write. But S2 James makes me happy as well, because he's happy and settled with Molly, if only for that reason. I wasn't feeling this at all with Georgie and Elvis, let alone Jamie (whom I pitied, to be honest). But they're no Charles and Molly._

 _So this really is the end. I mean it. Sorry guys, but I hope you liked this whole one-shot that suddenly grew extensions of itself. CJ and Molls in Afghanistan together—such amazing chemistry!—have made up my favourite bits about the show and anything after that bit gets very difficult and well, uninspiring._

 _But then, maybe you want this closure._

 _Thank you so very much for your support and reviews. You astound me._

oOo

A volley of gunshots shatters the tense silence, followed by a volley of furious Pashto and return fire that choke the air.

 _Keep your head down! Hold your fire!_

Her racing thoughts stutter to a stop. A discarded Glock by her side adds to the grey and red mist of confusion and terror.

Her blue gloves, donned an eternity ago, have turned a dull red.

The copious puddles of blood from goat and fallen men, steadily filling the cracks in the parched earth.

She wrenches her eyes from the horror of it, powerless to hold back the immobilising sense of shock that turns life and limb to ice.

Impossible, what she'd just done.

Suddenly, all those lessons and training videos on emergency aid crystallise into one salient point: save, not kill.

 _A duty of care for loss of life, limb or eye._

That alone pushes the air back into her lungs and galvanises her back into action, long enough to secure a tourniquet around Smurf's arm and to keep pressure on the abdominal wound on the boss's body.

"Stay with me! I need you to stay with me!"

 _Three Cat A, urgent med-evac required!_ _Repeat,_ _Zero this is amber 3 zero bravo. Emergency med-evac required!_

The bridge spins as she staggers and tips forward, next to the boss on her right and Smurf on her left, unable to think of anything but the very present pain that's eclipsing everything else. His wound is half-packed, but she presses hard and finishes the job, refusing to let go even when the blood flow can't seem to be stemmed.

James's body bucks hard beneath her hands, shivering violently as it fights to compensate for the sudden loss of fluids.

He's murmuring in her ear, whispering apologies that she can't fathom, rasping her name and ordering her to save Smurf in a way that makes her think he's convinced he'll bleed out on a disused bridge over a trickling river in the desolated highlands of Afghan.

Her only response is to press harder on the gaping wound, wanting to remind him of the excellent medic he'd once called her who would save the Captain and a disgruntled soldier whose mental state should have been called into question long before this Op had been planned.

"That's Dawes to you, Sir."

Fate versus Molly Dawes.

The medic.

The woman.

She has every intention of trumping the former today, if only to rub it in the boss's face and make him take the piss for believing lady luck when he finally comes around.

Suddenly, she isn't alone anymore, lifted from her awkward crouch on the ground by a number of hands and heaving bodies.

Firm hands try to pry her away from James. They finally succeed, but only by forcibly heaving her off him.

A spray of blood from his open wound makes her yelp in horror, but then there are bodies blocking her line of sight as they rush to the Captain and Smurf, while Kinders presses her down to keep her immobile.

Stubbornly, Molly tries to resist the annoying man. The chatter is near incomprehensible but she's catching snatches of medical terminology that can't bode well for anyone.

"Dawes!" Kinders finally yells into her face in exasperation. "You've taken a hit yourself. Not a bad one, but still a hit. Now stay fucking still! There's nothing more you can do for them."

His order hauls her back from the jagged edge of hysteria.

The whirring blades of the MERT finally register as it hovers above the casualty site, as does the pain in her side that returns with stinging vengeance. Snow dapples very distant peaks in brilliant white, bringing into focus the virtually impassable valley they're in.

Dangles and Nude-Nut help secure her, Smurf and the Captain in the MERT before backing away with a parting shot.

"You've got some balls there, Dawesy."

"I hope you never leave Two Section, Molls. I mean, like ever."

Their awestruck words linger in her head as the figures on the ground finally fade into sand and shadow when the MERT banks a hard right to pull out of the battle zone.

Only when the landscape flattens out with Bastion looming in the distance does she notice Smurf slouching on the opposite side of the MERT and staring grimly out into the distance.

But he isn't her priority.

As concerned as she is for him and that questionable state of mind that'd caused him to lash out the way he did, the only man she has in her sights now is the unconscious figure on the stretcher whom they've only temporarily managed to stabilise.

The medics' grim nods to her offer no reassurance. Their tense silence prickles her skin.

The Boss is far from in the clear.

She wouldn't even blink if she didn't have to, lest he's here one second and gone the next.

Worry and fear threaten to shatter her composure, but the adrenaline high that had kept her going since the valley erupted into violence now keeps the tears at bay.

It's the closest call she has ever had.

oOo

Slowly, they walk down the long, darkened corridor of the hospital towards the waiting area.

"He's going to be alright, Molls."

Smurf relays the news with such betrayal on his face that Molly thinks he wishes for the opposite to happen instead. His very own vocal regrets about the damned alleyway are not her burdens to bear, not when she'd tried to set him straight from the beginning.

They are mates, nonetheless.

Hopefully.

If he can get past trying out every juvenile thing around the lads to get her to notice him the way he wants.

"Smurf," she sighs heavily. "I so badly need him to be alright."

Working through the crush of worry and grief had made it a cracking hell of a week and the tight vise of dread around her chest hadn't loosened until she'd seen the boss herself through the windows of the ICU and heard the reassuring beep of his heart rate monitor.

"Oh, he'll be. The greatest man alive will be," Smurf proclaims sardonically.

The twisted smile that he gives her is bitter and angry, if that is any indication of how far his acceptance of their situation has come.

But Smurf bloody won't get an apology from her, if that's what he is hankering after. No further explanation from her that will placate this jealousy when he hadn't been able to hold his own emotions from the start.

Then again, neither had she nor the Bossman as well.

Mostly she's regretful that Smurf hadn't taken the inadvertent revelation too well. But what had she really expected?

"I understand if you hate me," she starts out, then stops when he gives her a sullen look that warns her against blathering on.

"Some things you just can't fight."

Smurf wanders off on his own, his gait still awkward with the sling.

"No, you can't," she agrees in a soft whisper, shaking her head at a stinging thought that sweeps in from nowhere. "Maybe it's fate."

Maybe there's more credence to the boss's weird trust in lady luck than they'd all like to think. Who bloody knows?

Molly returns to James's ward in the opposite direction in time to see the doctor leaving the room, then sneaks in before the door shuts fully.

Seeing him breathing and alive is helping her to piece together the jigsaw her fragmented thoughts had become as they moved him from Bastion to Birmingham as she stayed behind—her injuries had been deemed merely flesh deep—along with the rest of the lads.

The boss is barely awake but the stare he levels at her seems lucid and intimate enough. It sets her gritty eyes hotly watering, softening the white edges of his room into blurred blobs of colour that shift everything out of focus.

"Morphine. I think you aren't real."

And that's the first thing he says?

Relief at his lack of coherence nearly sends her to her knees as a laugh bubbles out of her.

"How you feeling, Sir? Scared the shit out of me."

The sides of his lips twitch. "And that's how I know it's you. Good to see you too, Dawes."

She decides to keep mum about her own injury, reaching out instead to take his hand.

The small contact alone pulls back the seductive memory of unbridled need, the months of denial and finally, the hard slide of sweat-slicked skin. Yet it also anchors her to the idea that he'll actually live when that had merely been a flickering, desperate hope only a few hours ago.

"You did, you know. I thought it was the end."

"I know. And I'm sorry."

A multitude of words and emotions are implicit in the brevity of that response. But is there any form of reassurance that she can give that he wouldn't reject?

"You didn't fail anyone."

James shakes his head tiredly, refusing her absolution.

"I did. But I couldn't have done anything differently had I tried," he pauses deliberately to look at her. "Wouldn't have wanted to."

She understands it all—the disorientation that a fundamental shift in beliefs can bring and how it will change a person's life in ways that she hasn't even fully grasped, because being with him, having served alongside him had done just that.

That, however, will have to be a conversation for another day.

"I…I'm just glad you're going to be alright."

"I will be." He nods faintly at her assessment and shuts his eyes. " _We_ will be."

She watches as he succumbs to sleep with his fingers still clutched tightly in hers and stays until the last rays of the winter sun give way to the inky hues of night.

-Fin


End file.
